Astral Rifts, Need help to make Astral Rifts makes sense Options

[grahariel]

Okay, I've got a bit of a problem. I've been running some friends through an SR campaign. Now, in order to create a sense of urgency, danger, and intrigue, I decided to use an Astral Rift. Now, I read the "Street Magic" explanation on Astral Rifts, Astral Gateway, and the Shedim. Now, here's where I might have dug myself into a bad hole. My PCs and two groups of NPCs raided three locations simultaneously to seize some nasty drug that's been put on the street. Now, when they got there they expected to fight several people. However, as it turns out the enemy, whom they're just figuring out, got to the drugs first and killed everyone with knowledge. The way they did this was to open up an astral rift, walk through it into the building, lay waste, and then head back through the rift and close it. Think dimension door for D&D. Now, my mage PC told me that sorcery can't essentially do that (though he doesn't say anything about science, or at least I hope not) except maybe certain spirits and the Shedim. Now, I want to create a decent explanation for how someone could manage to do this either through technology or sorcery or both, but I'm at a snag. My initial idea was just to hand wave it and not have the big bad guy reveal it or the PCs never finding out. However, I don't want to feel like a copout, so I had this idea that the main villain over the course of like two hundred years actually spends resources to actually find a way to subdue or defeat a Shedim and extract the knowledge of Astral Rift travel or inter dimensional travel from it. Or, also, just say the enemy managed to invest in tech that can actually create an inter dimensional rip using a combo of crazy researched tech and magic. I'm not sure, can anyone help me, or have I just tossed myself into a plot hole I can't dig myself out of?